Ariah stared at him in amazement. What had happened to the whiny little boy she had married? Not only was he concerned for someone other than himself, he wasn't even complaining about the pain she knew he must be suffering.
"What if he's hurt worse than he looks?" she asked. "You'd both be more comfortable at the house and that's where all the medical supplies are."
"Get a horse, some rope and a couple of blankets. We'll drag him home on a litter." Pritchard tried to sit up and blanched as waves of pain coursed through his chest. Ariah hurried over to force him back down.
"You'll get it bleeding again if you move around too soon. Lie there and rest while I fetch a horse and blankets."
"You’ll need help."
"I'll be fine. Apollo can help me."
The time it took her to traverse the thousand feet that separated her from the houses, to collect blankets and rope, round up one of the horses that had taken shelter in the barn and get it saddled seemed like hours. She didn't bother to change into dry clothes, knowing she would be soaked again by the time she reached the light. She tied the horse to the railing at the top of the stairs, unloaded the blankets and carried them down to the men.
"Did you think to bring some brandy?" Pritchard shouted as she knelt to bundle a blanket around him. "I'm frozen clear through."
She held out her hand and Apollo dropped a leather flask into her palm. Pritchard drank, coughed and drank again before handing it back. "Pour a bit down Old Seamus. It'll help keep his body temperature from dropping any lower."
Nodding, she crawled to the old man. How much of the brandy she got into Seamus's mouth and how much was washed away by the rain was difficult to determine. Pritchard hitched himself over beside her as she struggled to pull Seamus onto the blanket she had spread out beside him.
"Take his shoulders," Pritchard told her. "I'll get his feet, we'll roll him on."
"Your shoulder's too bad. I'll have to do it alone."
"I'll be careful. Come on. We're fighting time here. If the storm gets any worse, we'll never get to the house. And I'm sick of this damned rain."
Together they worked the old man onto the blankets and bound them around his frail body.
"Tie the end of that last rope under his arms." Pritchard's voice grew weak and strained from pain and exhaustion. "We'll attach the other end to the saddle horn."
When everything was ready, Ariah helped her husband climb the slippery stairs. Once he had managed to haul himself into the saddle and wrap the rope securely around the saddle horn, blood was flowing freely again from his wound and his color was as gray as the barrel of the gun Xenos had dropped into the mud. Ariah prayed the saddle was secure. She wasn't at all sure she had done up the cinch right. If Pritchard tumbled off, she knew she'd never get him back on, and the fall wouldn't do his wound any good.
With Pritchard commanding the horse from above, and Ariah guiding the bulky weight of Seamus's wet body from below, they dragged the old man to the foot of the stairs. The wind whipped Ariah's skirts about her legs, hindering her movements. Her teeth clattered so loudly she missed half her husband's shouted instructions.
"Watch . . . from bumping."
"What?"
"Don't let . . . head bump."
The stairs were too narrow for Ariah to walk beside Seamus. She had to sit on the step, haul his head and shoulders into her lap, hitch up a step, haul him up, hitch, haul, hitch, haul. Exhausted, dizzy and weak, it was all Pritchard could do to stay in the saddle as Ariah led the horse, with Seamus in tow behind on his gurney of blankets, up the long walk to the house.
"Pritchard? Pritchard, we're here. Give me the rope, I'll help you down."
He mumbled something in reply, dragged his leg over the horse and slid into her arms. They ended up on the ground. Exhausted and shivering with cold, Ariah used a combination of physical strength and threatening demands to force him to his feet. She wouldn't remember later exactly how she got both men into the house. Somehow she stripped their wet clothes off them. A pallet was made up for Seamus on the living room floor near the fire. Pritchard lay on the couch. Their mud-splattered faces were bathed, their wounds tended, their bodies warmed.
Ariah yearned to crawl into her own bed and let sleep erase the horrors of the past hours. But out on the tip of the bluff sat a darkened lighthouse, luring unsuspecting ships toward the dangerous, rocky shoreline. No matter how she yearned to ignore the responsibility dumped into her small hands, she couldn't. Because of her, a man had tumbled into the raging sea and two more lay near death at her hearth. Her conscience couldn't handle being the cause of more grief. So she bundled herself into the warmest coat she could find and dragged herself back out into the storm.
Eager for his own warm bed, the horse had headed for the barn. Ariah found him with his tail to the wind, his head hanging dejectedly over the fence that blocked his path. She got him into the barn, gave him a bucket of grain and covered his wet coat with a blanket, apologizing for being too weary to rub him down properly.
She was halfway down the steps that led to the lower bluff when her feet slipped out from under her and she tumbled the rest of the way down, landing in a muddy, tangled heap at the bottom.
The lantern she had brought had gone out. In the pitch-black night the whitewashed tower was a faint blur of lightness. Bruised and soaking wet, Ariah hauled herself up and limped to the door at the base of the light tower, praying she would make it before she was swept into the sea.
Safe inside at last, she leaned against the closed door and shut her eyes while she caught her breath and allowed her pulse to slow back to normal. Finally, she pushed away from the door and felt her way across the room to the storage cabinet where she found matches and the spare lantern. Within minutes a warm yellow glow flooded the round, whitewashed room.
Taking the lantern with her, Ariah climbed the stairs to make certain Pritchard had trimmed the five wicks and filled the heavy bronze kerosene lantern before Xenos's disastrous visit altered their lives. Assured that everything was in order, she lit the wicks, creating an 18,000-candlepower flame, and, to equalize visibility, the 160,000-candlepower light behind the red filters, thus providing that alternating white and red beams would flash their warning throughout the night for anyone caught at sea within twenty-one miles of the cape. That done, she descended to the second floor where she set the clockwork system of gears and weights which would keep the lens turning. Every four hours she would have to re-set the clockworks, but for now she could return home.
Rain, whipped to a frenzy by the wind, peppered the windows in an erratic rhythm as Ariah bathed Seamus's still face. In some ways she was more worried about him than she was Pritchard. A blow to the head such as the old man endured could cause serious internal damage. At the very least, she figured he must have suffered a concussion, or he would be awake by now.
She turned away with a sigh. There was no help for it; she would have to operate the light herself. Thank heaven Pritchard had showed her so much about how it functioned. But how would she survive, running the light at night and tramping back and forth to the house to tend the men, cook, clean, milk cows, and feed animals, until Seamus or Pritchard recovered enough to help? Or until Bartholomew's real replacement showed up.
She wished she could simply climb onto a horse and let it carry her to Barnagat. Another trip across the bay was the last thing she wanted, but it would be worth it if she could find Bartholomew and take refuge in his sheltering arms. The temptation was almost more than she could resist.
Seamus had wet himself. Feeling like a sneak thief, she went into the forbidden room off the vestibule and climbed the box stairs to his bedroom. After finding a nightshirt in one of his drawers, she yanked a blanket off the bed and returned downstairs where she proceeded to strip off the old man's clothes and dress him in the nightshirt—no easy chore. She replaced the wet blanket under him and covered him with another. Deciding that the room seemed cold, she built up the fire in the fireplace.
In the kitchen she brewed a pot of coffee and forced herself to eat a sliver of ham stuffed into a folded slice of bread.
Boots entwined her sleek furry body around Ariah's legs, mewing plaintively. The cat had long ago cleared the mice out of the pantry. At first, Ariah had kept Boots merely to aggravate Hester, and to impress upon the woman that she would decide who and what came and went in her kitchen. In time, Ariah had grown used to the cat, and so the animal remained.
Although the storm still raged, inside all was dead quiet, intensifying Ariah's loneliness. In all her weeks there, she had never felt the station's isolation more intensely. Nor had she felt so vulnerable. She broke off a piece of her sandwich and fed it to the cat, glad for its company.
After replacing the compress on Seamus's injured head, she checked Pritchard's shoulder. He squinted up at her from under eyelids heavy and swollen with fatigue.
"Am I hurt bad?" he asked, working his tongue against the dryness of his mouth and throat.
"It could be better." She smiled to hide her own fear. "The bullet doesn't seem to have hit anything major, which is good, because I don't have the slightest idea how to get it out. You've lost a lot of blood, though."
He dragged his hand out from under the covers and noticed he was naked. "Who took my clothes off?"
"I did."
"Damned rotten timing," he muttered.
"What?"
"The one time you take an interest in getting me naked and I'm unconscious."
Ariah's smile was genuine this time. "Is that all you ever think about?"
"Guess it has been on my mind a bit lately."
"How about some hot tea?"
"Sounds good."
She evaded his gaze as she hurried from the room, but he noticed the flush on her cheeks from his teasing. Nettie never blushed.
Suddenly it struck him that he had come very close to dying today and never seeing Nettie again.
Until that moment out on the bluff when the bullet bored into his chest, he had avoided thoughts of death. He was young. Old age and death happened to other people, older people like Aunt Hester, not to him. There was so much more he wanted to enjoy during his lifetime.
Like seeing Nettie grow round with his baby. If he had been killed today, he would never have even learned if it was a boy or a girl. It startled him to realize that it mattered.
Ariah returned with the tea. Her skin looked so soft as she bent over him to hold the cup to his lips. He put up his hand to touch her. She cast him a quick glance, saying nothing. If he touched Nettie like that, she would coo like a dove and snuggle into his hand, not turn away as though it meant nothing.
"Who's Plutarch?"
She raised her brows in surprise at his question. Then she remembered mentioning the man in her argument with Xenos. "A Greek essayist who lived around one hundred A.D. He wrote the famous line, 'Wicked men who congratulate themselves on escaping immediate trouble receive a longer, and not a slower, punishment'."
Pritchard frowned. "Figured he'd be someone like that."
He was lightheaded and woozy, yet even clear-headed he knew he would be no match for her in a discussion on the teachings of a bunch of old Greeks who'd lived so long ago that none of their words could possibly still be valid today. Uncle Bart, though, he would have loved to share that sort of talk with her. They would make a good pair.
Ariah held the cup to his lips again. He tried to take it and found his hand too shaky. The wind was whistling under the eaves, making Pritchard glad he didn't have to go back outside. The Tillamook Kings had a practice game scheduled for tonight. No doubt it would be canceled because of the storm; a lucky break for him since he would have had to miss it. He gave his wife a long, piercing look.
"You don't like baseball, do you?"
"What's to like, Pritchard? A bunch of grown men knocking a ball around with sticks and seeing how filthy they can get sliding in the dirt?
For a while after Ariah left to reset the clockworks at the light, Pritchard thought about things he had never spared thought to before, until finally, sleep overcame him.
The wind had abated somewhat, making Ariah's trip to the light easier this time. After setting the clockworks, she tied a piece of wood to the bottom of one of the weights. She wrapped herself in a thick wool blanket she had brought from the house and curled up below the block of wood. When it descended enough to touch her, waking her in the process, it would be time to reset the works for another four hours.
Thus she passed the night, napping in between her duties as temporary lighthouse keeper. By morning, the storm had eased, but instead of finding clear sunny skies, she awoke to a dismal fog that blanketed the cape and muted the sounds of the sea. For a while, Ariah stood outside, wrapped in her blanket as she listened for the whistle buoys at the mouth of the bay a few miles north. The silence was eerie and absolute. She told herself to be grateful she would never have to worry about Uncle Xenos again, but it failed to cheer her.
A gull rose to its feet in the scrubby ground cover where it had nested for the night. It stretched its wings and stepped toward her with a cry that sounded like a mournful "Please," as if hoping she had a spare fish in her pocket.
Ariah went back inside, her spirits dampened by the fog. She raised the wicks and measured the remaining kerosene oil, finding only enough to last a few more hours.
At the house she found Pritchard awake and worrying about the light. Ariah assured him she had seen to everything.
"But the lantern will have to be filled," he pointed out. "The kerosene oil is in the storage sheds just above the light. It has to be strained several times and I can't imagine you handling those five-gallon cans by yourself. They'll have to be lugged down the stairs, into the tower, and upstairs to the lantern."
"I'm strong, Pritchard. I'll be fine. How do you feel?"
"My shoulder hurts more than it did last night, if such a thing is possible. It's so stiff I can hardly move my arm."
"It will loosen up as you move it. Are you hungry?"
Ariah frowned at his negative reply. Pritchard normally had a very healthy appetite. She put her hand to his brow and found it overly warm. "You may have a slight fever. I'll bring you some hot tea to sip while I give you a cool sponge bath."
"You're going to give me a bath?" He gave her a suggestive smile. "That sounds good."
"And about all you're strong enough to handle, Pritchard."
"I might surprise you, if you gave me a chance."
"Just concentrate on getting well before I collapse from exhaustion, please."
At once he sobered. "I'm sorry all this had to fall on you, Ariah. Isn't Seamus any better yet?"
"He's still unconscious. I'm worried about him."
"I'll watch him, and try to help with the meals too."
Surprised, she gave him a smile that immediately brightened the cheerless room. "That's thoughtful of you. Now, let me help you into these." She waved a pair of clean underpants. "It'll make bathing you less . . . improper."
"We're married, how can seeing me naked be improper?" he asked, thinking how different she was from Nettie.
"It just is, Pritchard."
With Pritchard perched on the edge of the couch, his lap covered by a blanket, she eased the underwear up his legs, and helped him to stand so she could pull them into place. "Steady yourself with your hands on my shoulders."
He did as she suggested, but even with a blanket between them, she could not help noticing he was aroused. Gruffly, she shoved him back down onto the couch. Pritchard stifled the complaint he had been about to make because of the jarring pain that sitting so abruptly caused. Instead, he apologized. "I can't help it, Ariah. I don't do it on purpose."
"I wouldn't think you'd be well enoug
h for such a . . . thing," she mumbled as she tucked his blankets around him again.
"Being well enough to get hard is one thing, Ariah. Being strong enough to act on the impulse is another. And even if I could . . ." He let the sentence fade into the silence of the foggy morn, uncertain that he was ready to talk about the decision he had made during the night when the pain in his shoulder kept him awake.
"Ariah . . ."
She turned and looked at him questioningly. "Yes?"
"May I ask you something terribly personal?"
"I suppose so." She gave a weak smile. "After all, I don't have to answer, do I?"
Pritchard failed to rise to her halfhearted teasing. His pleasant young face remained as solemn as Reverend Ketcham in the middle of a Sunday morning sermon.
"Do you love Uncle Bart?"
Her mouth opened. Then closed. Her cheeks flushed rose-red, and she spun away from his anxious gaze. "Why on earth would you ask such a thing?"
He watched her arrange and rearrange the medical supplies on top of the table beside the couch.
"I spent a lot of time wondering why he went away so suddenly the way he did. He talked to me about you the evening before, you know."
She became very still.
"No, how would I have known? I never saw him again that day." She placed the roll of bandages beside the scissors, moved them next to the laudanum, and set them by the scissors once more.
"Again?" he asked. "You were with him that day?"
She gripped the beveled edge of the table and stared at her reflection in its gleaming surface, her cheeks as pale as the bandages she'd been toying with. "I saw him. Why do you ask?"
Her tone was defensive. Pritchard released a long sigh and tried again. "Ariah, I think there's something you should know. After the way I . . . well, after the disaster of our wedding night, I made a foolish decision to get some experience before I tried bedding you again. There was a girl I'd heard about in town and I went to see her."
He paused so long that she turned to look at him, almost holding her breath as she waited for him to finish.
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